Social navigation and seamful design

Chalmers, M., Dieberger, A., Hook, K. and Rudstrom, A. (2004) Social navigation and seamful design. Cognitive Studies, 11(3), pp. 1-11.

Abstract

Social navigation exploits social practices to help users navigate and explore system functionality. In a wireless world, people move around, meet others and experience places and situations. Those activities may be recorded up and presented to others through their wireless devices, and serve in social navigation. One design challenge is how to deal with the technical limits and ‘seams ’ of such devices, such as gaps and breaks in functionality, imprecise positioning, and errors in recording and representation. Social navigation systems rely on recording and representing people’s activity, and computational representation is affected by seams. We gained some insights into the way that social navigation and seams are socially constructed by analysing the functionality and social practice of three systems: GeoNotes, Hocman and the Seamful Game. We propose that social navigation and a ‘seamful design ’ approach helps users take advantage of seams, appropriating and adapting system functionality for their own uses and interpretations.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Chalmers, Professor Matthew
• Authors: Chalmers, M., Dieberger, A., Hook, K., and Rudstrom, A.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Journal Name: Cognitive Studies
• ISSN: 0069-4975